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“The Clone Wars … begun they have.”

That’s what Yoda, the Jedi master, says at the end of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, after the Republic’s newly-acquired clone army arrives to deliver a contingent of Jedi knights from destruction by the droid army of the Separatists. It’s an ominous premonition of what is to come.

If you haven’t seen that movie, it’s OK — I’m not really trying to fill you in on the plot. It’s just that Yoda’s statement came to mind today.

This morning, my Wycliffe colleagues in North Carolina successfully upgraded the email system that many of us will change to over the course of the next year or so. It’s the one that most Wycliffe members around the world have been using for years, but now it’s robust enough to handle the additional traffic that nearly all of us will throw at it. You can’t begin to imagine how much Bible translation relies on email. It’s a staggering realization for me sometimes.

So I thought about what Yoda said, and in our situation I interpreted it as, “Something big has just happened, and we’re going to have a lot of hard work to do as a result of it.” You see, in Dallas, we’re responsible for more than 1,000 email accounts. Some of those aren’t actually in use, but most of them will need to be moved to the new system. I have six people on my team, including myself, to do that work — which is in addition to our regular workload. If you’re a believer in Christ, you can correctly interpret that as a prayer request.

In the end — when the work is done — the change will be a good one. Our people around the world will be able to communicate and collaborate better — and at a lower cost. The result won’t be similar at all to the one Yoda would face in that story. Friend, thank you for praying me through this time!

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David Liddle

I grew up in Media, Pennsylvania, close to Philadelphia. I graduated from The Citadel in 1994. In 1995, I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators and have served in Africa, the United States, and Germany. Katherine and I were married in November 1998.
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